12/01/16: After brutal 2016, GoPro will lay off 15% of its workforce and shutter its entertainment division

Good morning. It’s Thursday December 1, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

TODAY’S CODEBREAKER

Ad verification: Ad verification is the act of reviewing, inspecting or testing in order to establish and document that an ad product or service meets certain standards. (For instance, viewability standards.) Many digital ad publishers — for instance, giants like Facebook — hire third-party verification vendors to insure that their ad products are up to snuff.

TOP NEWS

Like Amazon and YouTube Red before it, Netflix is finally relenting on a feature its users have been clamoring for: offline viewing. The streaming giant is now letting subscribers download select movies and shows to be watched offline on Android or iOS devices. The newest version of the Netflix mobile app features a "download" button on the details page for certain shows or movies. Original series such as Orange Is the New Black, Narcos, Stranger Things, and a number of others are included, as are licensed shows and movies such as The Office, The 100 and the animated film Minions. (You can find a full list here.) Netflix says it’ll roll out offline viewing to more shows and movies in the future. The feature is available globally.

Coming off of a brutal Q3 earnings report (really, a brutal 2016), it was clear that GoPro needed to make some changes. Looks like GoPro got the message; the company announced that it’s eliminating 15 percent of its workforce, or about two hundred full-time positions. Moreover, GoPro President Tony Bates will leave the company by the end of 2016. And in a major new move, the GoPro says it’s cutting its entertainment division altogether. The action-camera maker had devoted significant time and resources to developing media content and partnerships. But the company’s shares lost more than half their value this year, so something clearly wasn’t working. In any event, the company now expects to lower its operating costs to $650 million in 2017, which it says is an important step to becoming profitable next year.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

2017 is right around the corner…Start the year off right by inviting the stars on your team to attend our new offering – the CYNOPSIS RATINGS MASTER CLASS on January 25 at the YCNY.

This intensive day will cover everything you need to know about cross-platform ratings, social TV data, advanced targeting, and more. It will get you and your colleagues on the right track to tackle all the opportunities and challenges 2017 will bring us. Check out the agenda and

By 2017, a significant majority of digital programmatic advertising will have shifted to mobile. If you’re an agency, advertiser, or publisher working in the programmatic space, you need to know how to do mobile right. Where are the best apps and sites to use programmatic buying? Which ad formats are most effective on mobile platforms? How can you measure success? The Weather Company, MDC‘s Assembly, Mindshare and Centro will be on-board to answer these and other questions in a new Cynopsis Webinar. Learn more – and register here.

CYNOPSIS TOP WOMEN IN DIGITAL AWARDS

At January’s Top Women In Digital Awards, Cynopsis will honor excellence in digital content, marketing, advertising, social media, and other online content. Entries are open now — here.

PLATFORMS, APPS + DEVICES

Actress Reese Witherspoon is getting her own entertainment destination, thanks to a new partnership with the AT&T-co-owned video unit Otter Media. (Otter Media’s other co-owner is The Chernin Group.)Called Hello Sunshine, Witherspoon and Otter Media’s cross-platform video brand will feature exclusive and curated video content. The platform, which will debut as an ad-supported VOD channel next year, will be center on female-driven content. It’ll only be available to customers of DirecTV and the newly-launched OTT service DirecTV Now.

Nothing left to explore here. Snapchat has axed Story Explorer, the feature it debuted in 2015 to let users view Live Stories from different angles. Snapchat confirmed the move to Marketing Land.

MEASUREMENT

The data science firm Parrott Analytics announced that it has partnered with Fox Networks Group to measure the cross-platform, country-specific audience demand for the current (seventh) season of AMC‘s The Walking Dead. The firm found that audience demand is up by an average of 84% in 50 countries. That number is over 50% in Germany, Brazil and India, and over 100% in the U.K. and the U.S. To come up with its statistics, Parrot analyzes audience behavior across numerous channels, including social media, blogging platforms, file-sharing and peer-to-peer consumption, and streaming video platforms.

LIVE VIDEO

YouTube, welcome to the land of live 4K video. Google‘s video giant is set to add 4K support for live-streaming, enabling media partners and everyday YouTubers alike to stream both regular and 360-degree videos in Ultra HD. Users can watch 4K live-streams via desktop PCs, YouTube’s smart TV apps, and dedicated 4K streaming devices. Google will debut officially debut the new capabilities with a live broadcast of today’s Game Awards.

If only George Lucas had been able to operate in this kind of social media environment. Tomorrow at 10AM PT/1PM ET, Twitter will exclusive live-stream a special event related Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the upcoming film from to Disney/Lucasfilm. (The movie premieres December 16.) The live-streamed special — available at RogueOne.twitter.com — will include previously unreleased footage from the movie, and be followed by a live Q&A with director Gareth Edwards and the movie’s cast-members. The live-stream will be hosted by Time Inc.‘s People brand. Yesterday, the Time Inc.-owned streaming video service People/Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN) debuted its own original special focused on the film, which included a sneak peak at the movie’s new characters.

OTT + SVOD

It looks like HBO may want out of its contract with BAMTech, the video entertainment platform that spun out of MLB Advanced Media earlier this year. (The news, from the New York Post, comes via an anonymously sourced and unconfirmed report, so take it with the necessary caveats.) The Post reports that HBO would like to exit its contract sometime in 2017, instead directing resources toward its own in-house streaming capabilities. One source told the Post that HBO is looking to consolidate its global streaming platforms into a more centralized business. 33% of BAMTech is owned by Disney, though as the Post points out, many expect the Mouse House to become a bigger shareholder in the future. HBO’s BAMTech contract officially runs for one more year.

Looks like iQiyi isn’t coming to Taiwan anytime soon. The streaming entertainment platform — one of the most popular in China — has been rejected for a license application by the Investment Commission, a Taiwanese regulatory body. It’s not so surprising; China and Taiwan have, er,a bit of history.

RESEARCH

@wwepro84: #GilmoreGirls is back! I don’t think y’all realize how excited I am…Canvs, the language analytics company that measures emotions around content, analyzed tweets about TV and streaming programming from Nov. 23-29 using Twitter data from Nielsen. Insights from the 2,941,719 tweets expressing a specific Emotional Reaction (ER) include:
– 11.3% of viewers who mentioned their addiction to a particular show were streaming the Gilmore Girls revival on Netflix.
– 8% of people who said they were stunned by something they were watching were tuned into Fox‘s broadcast of the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys game on Nov. 24.
– Excluding sports, 4.1% of viewers who said they loved something on TV were watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC.
– 2.6% of people who mentioned something being funny on TV were checking out VH1’s Love & Hip Hop New York, with Cardi in particular provoking laughs.
– Canvs

EXECUTIVE MOVES

Digital media company VICE Media has promoted Ricki Askin to VP of Music Services and Licensing. She previously served as Head of Music Licensing and Archival.

TRIVIA

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel is engaged to a well-known model. Which one? (Email trivia@cynopsis.com with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)

Our Last Trivia Question: What famed French actor takes on the lead role in the Netflix series Marseille? If you’re American who’d just guessed the only French actor you’d ever heard of, there’s a good chance you would have been right. Answer: Gérard Depardieu. Kudos to Andy Pittman-TAMU/TX, Gloria L. Price-CBS News/NY, Sheena Das-Disney Media Sales and Marketing/NY, Len Appel-Branded Entertainment Network, Matt Meachem-Gracenote, Inc./NY, Susan Nessanbaum-Goldberg-M and S Entertainment, Inc./CA, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, and Mathew Tombers-Intermat, Inc./NY

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Mastering Mobile Programmatic

Mobile programmatic video spends will likely surpass desktop by next year. eMarketer projects that it will reach $15.45 billion in the U.S. by the end of this year. That’s 69% of all programmatic digital display ad spending. Are you up to speed on this technology? If the answer is no, then register today to hear from Assembly, Centro, Mindshare and The Weather Company during the latest Cynopsis Digital webinar on December 13.

DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT

It’s kind of wonderful to see Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro unite, even if it’s just in an ad for Burger King’s Cheesy Tots. Check out the spot here.

VP RESEARCH/BBCWA/NYC: Informs key business decisions across BBC’s portfolio of businesses. Leads custom qualitative/quantitative/3rd party research with a focus on identifying audiences, understanding who they are, what they need & the BBC’s role in their lives. 10-15 yrs exp. Full info HERE (12/9)

SEGMENT PRODUCERS/MSNBC/NY: We are looking for experienced Segment Producers to write and produce segments with speed and accuracy for news programming, in a breaking news environment. Full info/apply HERE (12/6)

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